Ramez Naam - Nexus

Was this a time to use the card he'd been given?

The President cares very much about your work , he'd been told. If you ever have a pressing issue that needs fast attention, just let me know.

Barnes. Maximilian Barnes, the President's Special Policy Advisor. The President's bag man. A man that had done things Becker wished he didn't even know about… A man that Warren Becker frankly feared.

This is my private number.

Becker sighed. This was one of those pressing issues. He reached down, pulled a bottle and a glass from his bottom drawer, poured himself two fingers of Laphroaig, and took a swallow. Then he dialed the number.

Barnes answered right away. Yes, he certainly remembered Becker. What did he need?

Becker explained. Their conversation was brief and to the point.

Yes, this sounded like the sort of thing the President would take an interest in. Yes, waiting another two days before launching recon drones would be unacceptable. No, Becker hadn't presumed too much in calling. He would have his approval to launch recon drones by nightfall, Thailand time.

Becker disconnected the call. His hand was shaking slightly. That man terrified him. The things Becker knew Barnes had done were enough… The things he was rumored to have done…

He shook his head, took another swallow of the Laphroaig to calm himself, turned his attention to the after-action report on the events in Bangkok.

Twelve ERD contractors killed. Ted Prat-Nung dead. Three of his men dead. Watson Cole dead. Suk Prat-Nung found dead in the building across the alley, next to a high-ranking monk and a petty criminal, both also dead. Yet another man dead in the alley itself, his throat messily cut. Four dead men on the roof of that building. It had been a multi-site bloodbath.

And last of all, twelve civilians killed inside the apartment – a handful of students, a burnt-out ex-nun and and her burnt-out ex-monk husband, a used-up whore, a young drug dealer – and this freakish child, this freakish creature.

Mai, they'd called it.

Becker shivered. What they'd pieced together corroborated one of the President's worst fears. Children born with Nexus abilities from birth. A new subspecies able to communicate telepathically with one another. How would they treat the rest of humanity? He thought of his two beautiful, normal, healthy daughters. Would these freaks turn his daughters into a new underclass? Into slaves for the new elites? The thought made him ill.

This creature Mai. The Confucian Fist clones. Shu – quite possibly no longer human herself. It was an unholy convergence of perversities. His daughters would live in a world where they were beset by enemies, beset by threats to the entire human race.

He took another swallow of the Laphroaig, followed it with a deep breath.

And Cataranes. Sam. What happened there? Shu must have coerced her. Nothing else made sense. Damn it. It was his fault, for sending her out in the field with Nexus in her skull. They hadn't imagined that Shu could coerce someone so quickly, so silently, without warning.

I'm sorry, Sam. We're going to get you back. We're going to fix you, if we can.

Becker turned back to the dead contractors, studied their faces, memorized their names. They'd been good men, doing an important job. He'd sent them into danger. He'd given the order to detonate the charges in their skulls, in the skulls of the dead and the still-breathing alike, rather than let them fall into Thai custody. Their blood was on his hands.

Had he done the right thing?

Yes. He was a good soldier. He'd followed the rules. Rules that were there for a reason.

He swallowed the last of the Laphroaig. It warmed him as it went down. It comforted him.

He read through the contractors' bios again. He would remember these men.

And he would do the same thing again, if he had to. The stakes were far too high for anything else.

Martin Holtzmann sat in his own office, reviewing the events in Bangkok.

Such a waste. Such an appalling waste.

Narong Shinawatra, the boy they'd coerced. Dead. Senselessly dead. What had gone wrong with their software?

Ted Prat-Nung, a competent nano-engineer before he'd become a drug dealer. Dead.

The child Mai. What would it be like to be born with Nexus in one's mind? To be able to speak mentally from birth with others who had the same capabilities. How would it affect language development? How would it affect intelligence? How would it affect social behaviors?

He had so many questions.

Dead. Just another dead end.

The Lane boy, with all he knew, all his ideas. Lost to them. Holtzman had hoped still to persuade that one to join them.

Not for the first time, Holtzman contemplated the Nexus stored in the secure laboratory two floors down. He had complete access to it. There were so many curiosities he had about it…

No. That was crossing one line too many.

42

A MATTER OF PERSPECTIVE

Kade woke slowly. He'd fallen asleep at some point, his head against the car door.

Sam was still awake. She felt tired, strung out, tense. He could feel the same thoughts cycling through her head. Mai. Her responsibility for the girl's death. The things she'd done in response. The men she'd killed. The hunters who'd be coming for them.

And plans. Plans. Cambodia. Laos. Burma. Where could they escape to? How?

Kade had no answers for her. He was completely cold inside. There was no emotion but an icy rage. The serenity package held him. Or perhaps it was shock.

The car wound left and right. They were up high above the Thai plains now, climbing a winding mountain road. Half the slopes were covered with rice paddies, terraces of green, yellow, and muddy brown. The rest was jungle, wild and thick. The sky was blue, dotted with white clouds. It was beautiful. He felt it not at all.

They came over a rise, and a structure appeared in the distance. A complex, nestled on a ledge in the side of the mountain. White buildings. Courtyards. Red roofs. Ornate gold towers above them. A waterfall sluiced out from below it, falling down a sheer cliff to crash into a jungle lake hundreds of feet below.

Twenty minutes later, they were there. The Tata pulled in through a gate in the wall, stopped in a wide stone courtyard. Monks met them at the car. A nun. A doctor. They hauled Sam away in one direction, Kade in another. They carried him to a monk's cell. A monk shaved the hair off his head with electric clippers. The doctor examined him, changed his dressings, peered at the swollen closed eye, injected him, put drug patches on his neck, made him swallow something. Darkness closed over him like a welcome friend.

The call came at 3am. Becker reached over to the nightstand to get it, struggled to pull himself back to consciousness and comprehension. It was Maximilian Barnes. Did the man ever sleep? It didn't matter. Becker had approval for the recon drone launches. He started to thank Barnes, found he was talking to dead air. The connection had ended. Becker looked at the phone in his hand, shook his head slowly.

"Who was that?" Claire asked sleepily.

"Just work, honey," Becker answered.

He rose to get his robe. He could call the Boca Raton from his secure home office. It was 2pm in Thailand. They could have the recon birds up tonight.

"Go back to sleep, Claire."

She was already out.

"Where are we on the candidate list for the surveillance drops?" Becker asked.

"Transmitting to your slate now, sir," Nichols answered.

Becker studied them. One hundred and twenty targets for a first wave of drops. They'd intercepted a call between Shu and Ananda. It had been in a language no system could translate. They'd hired a linguist, discovered it was Pali, a dead Buddhist ceremonial tongue. Translating it had confirmed their suspicions. Ananda had agreed to take on custody of "the boy" and "the woman with him" and help get them out of the country.